Minardi: 2012 F1 championship deeply conditioned by Pirelli

Ex Formula 1 team owner Giancarlo Minardi says Pirelli to produce this season world title with deep domination.

Pirelli makes seven different winners in first seven races and now Formula 1 extended the records. The winners are Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel, Pastor Maldonado, Mark Webber and in last Lewis Hamilton. Every F1 spectators are waiting for next different or repeat winner.

Pirelli have been quoted as the main reason for the puzzled battle with Minardi saying that one only has to look at McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button to see how much of an control the Pirelli has had this season.

“This championship is deeply conditioned by tyres, and only the driver who has the best understanding of them will succeed,” Minardi told crash.net

“We have [had] the seventh different winner inside seven different grands prix and running races is getting more and more difficult, [but] what catches our eyes are the big differences inside the same team.

“Let’s take [Lewis] Hamilton and [Jenson] Button as an example. The difference between them is huge. We almost cannot explain it. There is something unusual, so it’s getting more and more difficult to judge. There could be either technical problems or mental ones. As the championship goes by, the differences between the performances of two drivers belonging to the same team are getting bigger and bigger.

“Hamilton’s weekend was super. McLaren has improved set-up and tyres, which didn’t bear weather changes. Surely Jenson is not having a good period. From a technical point of view, in the last three grands prix, soft tyres have been used. On the contrary, he made a good race using hard tyres, which usually are the hardest to reach a right temperature.”

“The Montreal GP’s standing is a good example of that,” he pointed out, “In the first five positions, we have five different cars. Unlike Hamilton and Button, Felipe Massa’s performance level is getting higher and higher – it’s almost as good as Alonso’s – [while] Lotus also had a very good performance. As far as the relationship between chassis and tyres is concerned, the [Lotus] car is the most uniform amongst others. They optimised the result, [and Romain] Grosjean, [who] committed heavy mistakes in the previous grand prix, in a difficult race such as the Canadian one, succeeded in getting such a good result.

“He is among the drivers who haven’t won a race yet and, while [Sergio] Perez made some mistakes as well, he showed everybody to be a very fast driver. Together with their teams, the drivers, supported by a good car, implemented a solid strategy. In qualifying, they’re not fast yet, but their steadfastness allow them to obtain good results. The championship they’re running is interesting and engaging – Perez is an outsider whose performances are going to get better and better.”